The Hidden Cézanne

Museum visitors only rarely gain an inside into an artist's creative process. The exhibition 'The Hidden Cézanne' allows exactly this. The team of the Kunstmuseum Basel painstakingly brought together single pages of different sketch books that were scattered across the world. But the exhibition not only assembles pages from five sketch books for the first time, it also relates them to watercolours and oil paintings which were the result of the artistic process.

The exhibited artworks are contextualized by digital media. iart produced an animation about the history and content of the sketch books. Additionally, the so called «Sketch Book Chicago» was made accessible in a digital version by iart. It allows visitors to browse through Cézanne's sketches via touchscreen.

The projections of high definition scans reveal how complicated and elaborate the reconstruction of the sketch books was. The historic sheets were assigned by analysing spills and torn edges. Moreover, one learns about the places of origin of the sketches, their motifs, detachment and sale. This contextualisation provides new insight into Cézanne's approach and the history of his oeuvre.

The multimedia contextualisation takes into account the visitors' growing desire for interacting during a museum visit. Exhibitions such as 'The Hidden Cézanne' at the Kunstmuseum Basel, 'Der blaue Reiter' and 'Paul Gauguin' at the Fondation Beyeler demonstrate how the subtle use of digital media caontributes to the success of art exhibitions. 'The Hidden Cézanne' was on view from 10 June untill 24 September 2017 at the Kunstmuseum Basel Neubau. iart was responsible for the conception, planning and realisation of the media of the exhibition.